


Who you're gonna call?

by orphan_account



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Banter, Chaotic Believer John, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Love Confessions, M/M, Scared Skeptic Brian, Sharing a Bed, buzzfeed unsolved au, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-08 06:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21471451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “This is going to be fun!”“Well, at least you can see the stars very well tonight.” Brian added, a smile tugging on his lips.“Stars and ghosts, we’re in for an amazing night!”“No ghosts, just stars, Deaky.”John grinned at him, knocking their shoulders together, not even bothered by his lacking enthusiasm. He was probably used to it already, they have been doing this for a while now, after all.“Why not both? They are not mutually exclusive.”“Ghosts don’t exists, stars do.”“How do you know?”Brian groaned loudly.
Relationships: John Deacon/Brian May
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42
Collections: Breaky Week





	Who you're gonna call?

**Author's Note:**

> Final Day of Breaky Week! Written for the prompt 'Someone Dies'.

“Guess what I bought!” 

John sat on Brian’s desk, kicking his legs against his chair, grinning in the way that made his eyes crinkle up and showed off his tooth gap. Brian tried very hard not to be endeared by it but failed. 

“What did you buy?” He asked. 

“A spirit box!” 

He showed him some weird device that looked like some kind of radio or walkie-talkie of some kind. Brian blinked several times, trying to make sense out of what John had said and what he was seeing. 

“A what?” He then asked. 

“A spirit box! It’s really cool! You can talk to ghosts by scanning through radio stations and they can use the radio waves to string sentences together. In a way.”

Brian groaned in annoyance and buried his face in his hands. John laughed and boxed him in the shoulder playfully, obviously enjoying his pain. He almost regretted saying yes when John had asked him to join his weird ghost hunting show as a co-host but he knew it was John’s passion project and he was his friend first and foremost and he didn’t want him to fail at his job just because Brian didn’t want to risk being awkward around his crush. Also, he didn’t want to imagine how this would have turned out if head asked Roger to be his co-host. 

It didn’t stop him from wondering why he even liked John, though. 

Nobody frustrated him quite like John. It wasn’t just the fact that he kept arguing with Brian that ghosts were real- they weren’t- or that they seemed to disagree on many other things that were so trivial it shouldn’t matter. Except when it came to John, they did and most of the time, they could be found squabbling about one thing or another. John was also very fond of playing tricks and little pranks on him. It was never anything mean so Brian never got mad at him. It just didn’t made any sense why Brian fell for him of all people. 

“Deaky…” He said, already feeling a headache coming. “You’re not really believing that, are you?”

John shot him a look that told him he did, in fact, believe it and Brian groaned.

“Alright, sure, I’ll humor you. How does it work?” 

“I’ll show you at the location today. Finish up whatever you have to do and meet me at your car.” 

John grinned and jumped off the desk and patted his shoulder when he passed him and Brian sighed and rubbed his temples before he went back to work. 

+++

“Oh, that looks like a haunted castle right there!” 

John laughed and spread his arms out as he grinned widely at Brian. Brian was frowning up at the castle. If he had to pick a location for making a horror movie it would probably this one. It was old, with ivy growing over the walls and the towers, the windows were dark and it loomed over them on top of a hill. 

“I hate it already.” Brian said.

He shot the camera John was holding a quick look before adjusting his gear and double-checking the battery stand on his own gear. It would be a long night and he wasn’t exactly looking forward to it. 

“Do you have your sleeping bag?” He asked John. 

John gently kicked a bag on the ground in front of him and Brian nodded happily, crossing that from his mental To-Do-List. 

“I can’t wait to meet some ghosts!” 

Brian rolled his eyes on him but followed John towards the castle. It was even more creepy inside than outside. It was dirty- unsurprisingly, nobody lived here and the owners probably wanted to play up the whole ‘haunted’ look- and dark with weird portraits, old armors and typical medieval style decor around. And lots of spider webs. 

“This is-” They both started at the same time. 

“-gross as fuck.” Brian finished, wrinkling his nose. 

“-fantastic!” John said, grinning wildly. 

They exchanged a quick glance, before breaking into giggles. They made sure to get some good footage of the unsettling hallways until they came to a big ballroom of some kind. 

“Hello, ghosts!” John yelled, cheering when it echoed through the room. 

Brian shook his head at him but filmed it anyway, keeping the camera on his face to capture the childish delight on his face. 

“So tell me why we are here, then.” 

John’s face lit up visibly and Brian smiled despite thinking this whole thing was kind of stupid. He was cute when he got excited. And if it meant he had to listen to a ghost story and John’s rambling for a while, then so be it. Brian sat down on the windowsill and waited until John had set up their tripod. Their legs brushed together when he sat down next to him. 

“Alright! Welcome to another episode of Unsolved! Today we are here in the Thrawcliff Castle where some extremely fucked up shit happened and we will try and get some ghosts to tell us more about it!” 

He smiled at Brian before he went off about the history of the castle. Apparently, some 500-ish years ago the son of a rich family that owned the castle started hearing voices and developed violent tendencies that ended with him murdering his three siblings and his parents, only to commit suicide afterwards. It was a unsettling and sad story but once John got to the part where he talked about people feeling presences and apparitions, weird happenstances and whatnot, Brian felt the need to roll his eyes. 

He let John talk, not feeling like he had anything but skepticism to add and while that was the whole reason he was here in the first place, he didn’t want to dampen John’s fun just yet. Not that he would, John seemed to not give a shit whether Brian was a fan of a location or not, still excited and determined to find a ghost. Or proof of a ghost. 

“This is going to be fun!” 

“Well, at least you can see the stars very well tonight.” Brian added, a smile tugging on his lips. 

“Stars and ghosts, we’re in for an amazing night!” 

“No ghosts, just stars, Deaky.”   
  


John grinned at him, knocking their shoulders together, not even bothered by his lacking enthusiasm. He was probably used to it already, they have been doing this for a while now, after all. 

“Why not both? They are not mutually exclusive.”

“Ghosts don’t exists, stars do.” 

“How do you know?”

Brian groaned loudly. 

+++

They decided to test John’s spirit box thing on top of the tallest tower. 

It was a horrible loud, piercing noise and Brian physically flinched back when he heard it for the first time and it didn’t get better with time. Brian hated it. He didn’t think he could hate it any more than being in a unsettling place in the dark and sleeping there but he was proven wrong. John loved to do that and he managed it again. 

“It switches through radio channels so ghosts can string words together to talk to us.” John explained to him. 

Brian only barely resisted the urge to cover his ears. 

“Let’s go and ask the ghosts some questions, why don’t we?” 

It was stupid. John was just talking to static with no answers- the unintelligible stuff- didn’t count because it wasn’t words- but he was ecstatic about the whole thing and kept asking questions. Brian had no idea how he did not get frustrated by getting nothing concrete in return over and over again. 

“Isn’t that amazing?” John asked. 

“Amazingly annoying.” 

John rolled his eyes at him. 

“Come on, let’s do solo investigations!” 

+++

The thing was, Brian didn’t believe in ghosts. He was a man of science and ghosts just didn’t seem like a plausible thing to him. Aliens, sure, space was just too big for them to be the only intelligent life form out there but ghosts? He couldn’t believe in it no matter how many different theories John proposed to him. None of the evidence convinced him enough to believe in it. 

But Brian was still very afraid. Not because of ghosts, because that was stupid, but because there were so many other things to be afraid of. Ghosts may not scare him but potential injuries while being far away from medical help, getting an infection from the filthy surroundings and meeting some random serial killer sure did. The last one wasn’t really as likely as the others but he was still afraid of somebody lurking in the shadows of wherever they were, just waiting to get a chance to rob him or whatever. People were way scarier than ghosts. 

So he hated the solo investigations because it was scary to be alone in a dark hallway in a creepy castle. 

“God, fuck, okay. This is still stupid but here we go: Hello, ghosts.” 

He walked down the hallway, his flashlight shaking slightly. 

Their fans found it hilarious that the skeptic of all people tended to get the most scared. Brian liked to think it was because he had common sense. John would happily invite a demon to possess him if it let him prove their existence. And Brian could respect that dedication. He just wished it wasn’t ghosts and demons and all of these kinds of things John was so obsessed with. It would save him so much trouble. 

“Damn you, John.”

He slowly made his way down the stairs into the dungeon- because of course all the gory things happened in the dungeon and many gory and downright disgusting things had happened here if John had been telling the truth- and he started to question his life choices again. 

“If there is anyone in here with me, please speak up.” 

Of course there was only silence and Brian sighed. 

“Please don’t make me use the stupid box. Just talk to me so we can call it a day.” 

There was still no answer and Brian sighed again, louder this time, and set down the spirit box and turned it on, flinching at the ugly sound it made. He tried to get some ghosts to talk to him but- unsurprisingly- got no response and left the dungeon as soon as John called him to tell him his ten minutes were up. 

“How was it? You scared? Met a ghost? Or a serial killer? Maybe a weirdo in a trenchcoat?” 

“Stop making fun of it and get us a ghost, I want to leave.” 

John laughed and made his way downstairs while Brian set up their sleeping bags in the ballroom. He could hear John yelling at the ghosts- air-, demanding them to show themselves and talk to him. He was mercilessly taunting him and Brian could never understand how John could believe in them and yet be so incredible fearless. He read all these stories about them doing terrible things and causing violence and stuff and yet he didn’t seem to be scared at all. Or his way of dealing with being scared was cursing ghosts out. 

After a while, it grew quiet and Brian knew John had finished his private investigation and waited for him to come back. 

“Find anything?” Brian asked. 

“Oh, I got some really interesting answers! I’ll show you later. Are you ready to go to sleep?”

+++

Brian could never sleep at locations and today wasn’t an exception. It was cold and uncomfortable and he was still afraid someone with bad intentions was going to show up. He just lay in the dark, turned away from John to see the door to the room which probably didn’t help his paranoia much. 

“Can’t sleep?” John asked quietly. 

“You know I can’t.” 

He could hear John shift behind him and then he was kicked in the back until he turned around to face him. John’s face was barely visible in the darkness but he could make out his silhouette faintly. 

“Nothing is going to happen to us. No bad people will come for us. No one but us and the ghosts here. And since you don’t believe in those, you’re good.” 

“I know that.” Brian whispered. “It’s called an irrational fear for a reason.” 

John chuckled softly and Brian hit him blindly in the chest, grinning satisfied when he let out a low groan. 

“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you from any ghosts and serial killers. I promise.”

It didn’t really calm Brian in any way but it was a nice sentiment. He didn’t have to tell John that- he knew that- and so he didn’t and just let the silence between them drag on. 

“Oh for fucks sake, c’mere.” 

“What?” 

Before getting an answer, John unzipped his sleeping bag and reached for him, pulling Brian close. John was way stronger than he looked. 

“Let’s zip us together.” 

Brian tried to argue but it was a weak attempt and he held the flashlight so John could make their two sleeping bags in on big one. Then, he forced him to lie down facing away from the door, his head resting on John’s arm and their legs tangled together. His nose was almost touching his shoulder and Brian felt himself blush. 

This wasn’t what normal friends did, was it? Though, normal friends wouldn’t go ghost hunting together either so was he really in any position to judge? John might not be the most touchy-feely guy but they had been friends for years now and he didn’t mind Roger or Freddie being all over him. 

“Are you comfortable?” 

Brian nodded despite it being a bit of a lie. He didn’t know where he was supposed to put his hands so they were just awkwardly laying between them. John didn’t seem to have this kind of problem, easily wrapping his arm around Brian’s waist. 

“Good, then sleep. I’ll fight any evil people trying to get to us.” 

“You’re ridiculous.” Brian said. 

“No, just in love with you.” 

Brian’s breath got caught in his chest. John’s bravery floored him over and over again. Of course he had no issues just confessing his love like this, as if it was nothing, as if he had nothing to fear, nothing to lose. Sometimes he wished he had even half of this bravery. But even now, he could not say anything even though he really wanted to. 

“It’s okay, Bri, you can confess your crush tomorrow. Maybe over brunch?” 

“Brunch sounds nice.” Brian choked out. 

John hummed satisfied and pressed a short kiss into Brian’s hair. 

“Great, looking forward to it.”


End file.
